Post by Kyle Shane on Apr 24, 2017 2:48:05 GMT -5
It took us all by surprise the morning that the plan was finally enacted.
The Grey had been laying low for weeks after some of the smaller scale hacks had fallen through. Patrick, our Voice, had gone dark, and Kyle, our firecracker, the strategic get that would serve as a public ambassador, a Face of the Grey if you will, hadn't made much headway. Maybe he was distracted, splitting his time between his endeavors in PCW and our cause. Or maybe, he had never been fully invested. I remember where he was, specifically, the day that machines started running wild in the streets; in his quarters, getting high. Pining about some loss in his day job. On the downslope of a bipolar episode. Wrapped up in thoughts of what he'd done wrong with Array. Check all of the above. But what was I doing?
I remember watching the feed from Brody's laptop, as in the streets of NYC the hack took control. Every car with a modern onboard operating system, the so-called "smart cars" of the future that could self-drive, stop and see 360 degrees around them - they had a chip that could be overriden and used like the strings of a puppet. And they weren't the only ones. Brody's camel-like mouth hung agape as he looked up at me. "What the hell is this, Krista?"
Times Square lit up with a graphic of the distorted, burning eyed mask of the Grey. Electronic billboards sprang to life with it's mocking face, laughing, lording over all.
As below it, a fleet of driverless cars hummed down the road, smashing like a demolition derby. The cars drove with unchecked aggression and uncoordinated savagery. They didn't care what they mowed down. They were just turned on and pointed in one direction, and told to go.
One of our techs, Sierra, squawked as she recognized a person she knew being run down on the feed. A few people turned away, their faces sick. And just like that, I looked around the room of our revolutionaries. None of them had any pull in this. We were watching the big monitor in the front of the room, staring in something approaching horror at the apocalyptic scenario. A couple people were trying to find the signal broadcasting into the fleet's onboard chips, as their hands flew over their keyboards.
Brody was in the thick of it, barking orders like he wasn't a burnout from tech school with a degree in computer science. Here, he was a captain at the helm, snapping orders to his crew. A couple of other tech heads were working on their laptops with him. I could only watch.
A scrolling, taunting message was running across the electronic sign in the city, as the news channels were cutting in, showing images of the attack. "A BRAND NEW FUTURE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY SHINRON - GREY"
This... this had gone too far. I looked at the devastation, the wreckage coming through a hundred channels. I had taken part in this. We all had. We'd bought wholesale into this rhetoric, and it got so far away from our goals, our reality. I had brought people in to this madness because I thought there was some noble end, some message behind the revolution. But the Grey only ever had anarchy in mind.
I felt a sucking gut wound of pain in my midsection, which I attributed to the anxiety and helplessness. And now, with the world devolving into screeching metal monsters and flaming rubble topside, I felt like everything was racing towards some horrible conclusion.
I felt heartsick as I left the control center behind. But before I could exit the room, I saw an anguished, panicked yell go up from the room of engineers, and one of them pointed at a newsfeed showing grainy camera footage of a bigger, stronger machine rumbling onto the street. "He's taken control of a tank!"
The world had gone insane, upside down, ridiculously so. I could barely control my legs as I left the room, and when I entered the corridor, I vomited.
Everywhere I looked I saw the mask. The cartoonish, lit up grin that hid the face of a man who had recruited me through force to do his bidding, including to recruit his possible brother.
My mind was tearing apart at the seams like someone taking Polaroids and cruelly ripping them down the middle. I didn't have much in the way of conscious thought as I went down the corridor. Just, Kyle, was all. Thinking of him because I recruited him because he was going to be an asset for us because he.
I heaved, dropped to my knees. I couldn't stop seeing footage of people being run down in the streets by cars being driven by remote. I couldn't scour these images from my head.
When I wiped the remainder from my lips and pulled myself back up, I found myself making my way down, feeling by fingertips, blindly.
And that's when I found him.
The nominal hero of the piece. The final jigsaw to be inserted into the puzzle. I remember being so skeptical when The Grey had bid me to recruit Kyle as an ambassador, so caustic. How could this mercurial, shiftless man child ever hope to rise to the occasion and stand for something other than himself? How could he champion the rights of oppressed people, take a stand against the evils of the world? When I first met him, sitting across from me at our faux-therapy sessions, god, I saw only hollowness in his eyes, and I sat back, biting my pen, thinking Jesus, Patrick, this is the one? But I felt as he came into the fold, some spark in him. A sense that he wanted to make a change in his life. A sense that he wanted to leave behind a lasting piece of himself in this world. That was my second impression.
As was turning out right then, my first impression was the more correct one.
He sat, on his bed, pipe in hand, his eyes squinted, his leg cocked up jauntily, and he blew out a cloud of sour smoke. He didn't seem fussed at all, not a care in the world.
My hand came across like a claw, slashing the pipe out of his hand. The glasswork shattered, leaving burnt offerings and ash on the tiles. Kyle's expression darkened.
"Don't you know what's happening out there?" I snapped, seeing red. "Don't you even give a shit?"
Kyle huffed, and he looked away. The question of how much of this he'd known about beforehand was barely a blip in my mind. All I knew is that he, the one who was supposed to have been at the center of our operation, was here hiding away, shirking his responsibilities. I had never been so infuriated, so... outraged at the casual indifference and nihilism I'd seen in someone. Maybe I had misjudged Kyle Shane after all. Maybe he was the kind that folded after being hit with the hard work, after all...
"I knew it was too late when Hiro got his father to double down on security after our night in jail," Kyle said. His voice was maudlin, introspective. He had to have been thinking of it as one more relationship he'd broken beyond repair. But I had no patience for his friend drama. "You did say Shinron was in everything, their computer systems and on-board navigation for all of these smart cars were ripe for the picking. Patrick... Grey... was talking about the possibilities of doxxing them. But I didn't think he'd do it."
"So you knew," I said, furious, wanting to hit him again. "And you didn't do squat about it? Goddammit Kyle. This revolution was supposed to be about changing things. About elevating our world for the better."
"Hey, don't give me that bullshit." Kyle said, rising to his feet, and now it looked like he wanted to hit me. "You never once gave me any clear idea of what you wanted from me. I dropped out of MIT and sold drugs for a living. You wanted me to use my connections to Hiro, just 'because his father owns our company through a couple different corporations, but you never once gave me clear indication what that means. It's like you had no idea what to do with this throughline once you started."
I threw my hands up, exasperated. "Well excuse me, I thought for sure the great God of Game could figure something out. Let me tell you something, if we did put a lot of weight on you, maybe it was as a reaction to your delusion that you're the most important thing in the world. Spoiler alert: you're not."
"Oh, fuck you, Krista! For all of this you had people show up at my friends, stalk my ex, and tap my phones just so you could get me under control. Because that's what he wanted. Chaos out there, control in here." He said, jabbing a finger in the direction we guessed the Voice in the Grey was hiding.
"So, get up off your ass and do something about it."
He turned away from me, stubborn as an ox. "I can't, and it doesn't matter. I wanted to be a part of something different than the same antics I got into in WGWF, feeling adrift and just getting by selling pot in my spare time. I wanted to join a new cause, a new challenge, and do something people had never seen, something that would change the world. But people don't want to hear what I have to say." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "My legacy is always going to be that I let something slip through my fingers. Some playing god I am."
I then, took him by the chin, and raised his eyes up to meet mine, and spoke to him firmly: "I don't ever want to hear you talk about yourself like that again."
He looked at me, shocked. "I know that the depression and anxiety have gone hand in hand with the drive to compete and succeed for so long and that you ride this rollercoaster of highs and lows. I know your words are just the demons talking. But dammit, Kyle, nobody came here to see you whine. You are Kyle Shane, and you earned a right to talk about yourself in high regard. So you didn't leave a mark with this group, you still came in looking to try something different. And that's what you need, is to dust yourself off and try. The only thing stopping you, is you."
Whether it was in defiance of the motivational speech, or because a fire had been lit under him, he stood, and there again, I saw that hollowness receding from his eyes. And, well, maybe my second opinion of him wasn't so far off the mark.
"And I want you to remember, Kyle, it's up to the winners to write in the end what history says. The people that dare, the people that try when they get knocked down. They're the ones who get to say what their legacy is. Not the people who give up. So don't give up on the rebellion now."
"You're right," he said, and just like that, his smirk seemed a little more cutting, his hair springier. It was like Shane was coming alive. He checked his phone, seeing updates scrolling on his screen. And he knew it was time to go. He was out the door, and down the corridor. Away from the tech room where members of the group were still punching away on laptops while a doomsday scenario played out on a million news bulletins. He didn't stop there. He was dogged, heading straight to the source.
"Wait, where are you going?" I asked, jogging after him, long legs and all.
"It's about time we ended this whole Grey nonsense and bring it all crashing down. I'm gonna do what I should have done the first time I saw under that mask. I'm going head to head with my brother."
"And then we're gonna see what they write about today in the books."
I know you all saw what just happened.
I went into last week largely unheralded. I was determined to play the underground hero card to it's hilt, because I don't see weakness in being the Underground champion. I said that I was going to prefer to remain unambitious, stay in the background, stay my hand from stepping into a main event caliber role and dominating, because I was tired of the weekly grind that being the top guy in any fed entails. I was just coming back from fatal burnout. When I was facing Grimm I was content to take shots from afar at the throne. Whereas Grimm could only bluesky about what a feather in anyone's cap facing Grimm could be, and even politely, saying that it didn't matter whether I won or lost, I would still make a name for myself. That was the side plot in last week's history book. But when the final page turned, I lost. So my name went down in crushing defeat and I was sent tumbling down to start all over again, right? Broken, dejected, like Sisyphus, weeping and having to push the stone up the goddamn hill all over again, oh woe is me. Except that that isn't the story that was written in the history books. And that is not how I'm interpreting my career track from here on out.
See, last week's Trauma, the announcers were playing up the fact that I, not Grimm, was the only REAL champion in that match, as well they should have because I won my belt via show of force in a wrestling match, not losing my chin hairs and falling off a cage. Even facing the six time, dominating champion, the crowd was turning onto my side the entire match and, brief as it was, I had him on the ropes. I had the Hangtown Horror right where I wanted him, and it was only one small mistake that lost me a battle. But that pyrrhic victory of Grimm's won me a world. I earned more esteem and more recognition in that one night than I did beating ten Lunacy's. And now there's no hiding my light under a bushel. All I can think is that I was stupid to try to portray myself as low key and content where I was when facing Grimm. Because now that I know what I can grasp I don't want to stop. When you go on the wikipedia page for PCW, from here on out, this is where my name is going to start racking up the entries. Because as has been pointed out, when the final say has been done and history is in the books, how people look at you is all up to you.
Now, with that said, I have to turn my attention back to the female contingent, since it seems that history is trying to peg me into this stereotype.
You have Olivia Xavier, demanding a title shot from me after weeks - WEEKS! - of her "mind games" and her "war against misogyny" that she was taking to me. But once she lost her spot in line, she was quick to sweet talk and try and get back into contention. To bat her little eyelashes and try to curry favor with me again after weeks of being so cold. Then when I told her in no uncertain terms that she was a loser, and as such, lost her spot... then she goes back to the heartless virago act, the shrill harpy shrieking "YOU'RE A CREEP!" and slapping me in the face. And I didn't take kindly to being assaulted, but I held my hand. Until...
You have Hiroshi Yukio coming in, riding in like a fat Don Quixote riding on a mule of his own blubber shooting off his mouth about protecting the smaller and weaker people from "bullies" like me. Side note, isn't EVERYONE smaller than Hiroshi Yukio, therefore the big idiot's going to have quite a full schedule. But he calls me a bully... And so...
You have the final piece of this historical drama, Eira. Who also fits the criteria of Hiroshi's protectorate, because compared to me she is smaller, weaker, and severely outclassed as a fighter to the point where if I pushed myself more than even moderately hard in the ring I'd beat her so badly that she'd need to take another hiatus. As I beat Eira, quite handily, the last time we faced. What's changed between now and then? Well, shocking everyone, she did pick up a win over Whitey Ford at Mass Destruction and now there are higher stakes, since this match is for entry into The Icemann Invitational Tournament, but no, no, nothing's really changed per se. Eira is Eira. She'll show, or she won't. She'll half-ass, or she'll... quarter ass, really, I have yet to see anything out of Eira that constitutes actual, physical effort, no matter how good beating Whitey makes her look. Fact is, that effort didn't come into play when she faced me last time. So I'm wondering. How badly am I going to come off for this? If Hiroshi was willing to wallop me and swing his bags of suet at my head to knock me off guard just because I blocked Olivia from slapping me, how about this week when I have Eira dead to rights, with a trip to the quarterfinals of TI-IEbutnotbeforeC-T tournament and a chance to gain absolutely everything I looked for when I came to PCW, all of that hanging in the balance. When I step up to the plate and smack it out the park, and when I cave in Eira's bottle bleach head. What's the takeaway there? Bullying or nah?
Doesn't matter.
I'm writing my own chapter in history. History doesn't take into account whether someone was bullying, because at the end, all that matters is the resulting rise to power. And if the narrator is a little unreliable, or the main character shows some shades of grey don't take offense. But the fact is, I've been writing these "Books" every week trying to gauge what you people want to read, but it's never been what or how I like to write. It hasn't done me any favors. I think it's time that I stop caring if y'all like how the book's written and just go to town like I'm writing a textbook.
So the bad news for Eira is that she's just going to be a footnote this week. Upon which is stamped my footprint, sub-set her forehead.
Put your faith in the words of the man who's going to have several volumes about his exploits when all's said and done.
I've only just begun to show you all what I can do. If you thought the announcers were going gaga last week, just watch The Icemann Invitational Tournament. The real champion that they heralded last week is going to cut through the ice, claim the title shot, and then get another crack at the Hangtown Horror so I can show him exactly why he was labelled the false one.
My fucking word, so it is written, so it shall be.
Ha.
The Grey had been laying low for weeks after some of the smaller scale hacks had fallen through. Patrick, our Voice, had gone dark, and Kyle, our firecracker, the strategic get that would serve as a public ambassador, a Face of the Grey if you will, hadn't made much headway. Maybe he was distracted, splitting his time between his endeavors in PCW and our cause. Or maybe, he had never been fully invested. I remember where he was, specifically, the day that machines started running wild in the streets; in his quarters, getting high. Pining about some loss in his day job. On the downslope of a bipolar episode. Wrapped up in thoughts of what he'd done wrong with Array. Check all of the above. But what was I doing?
I remember watching the feed from Brody's laptop, as in the streets of NYC the hack took control. Every car with a modern onboard operating system, the so-called "smart cars" of the future that could self-drive, stop and see 360 degrees around them - they had a chip that could be overriden and used like the strings of a puppet. And they weren't the only ones. Brody's camel-like mouth hung agape as he looked up at me. "What the hell is this, Krista?"
Times Square lit up with a graphic of the distorted, burning eyed mask of the Grey. Electronic billboards sprang to life with it's mocking face, laughing, lording over all.
As below it, a fleet of driverless cars hummed down the road, smashing like a demolition derby. The cars drove with unchecked aggression and uncoordinated savagery. They didn't care what they mowed down. They were just turned on and pointed in one direction, and told to go.
One of our techs, Sierra, squawked as she recognized a person she knew being run down on the feed. A few people turned away, their faces sick. And just like that, I looked around the room of our revolutionaries. None of them had any pull in this. We were watching the big monitor in the front of the room, staring in something approaching horror at the apocalyptic scenario. A couple people were trying to find the signal broadcasting into the fleet's onboard chips, as their hands flew over their keyboards.
Brody was in the thick of it, barking orders like he wasn't a burnout from tech school with a degree in computer science. Here, he was a captain at the helm, snapping orders to his crew. A couple of other tech heads were working on their laptops with him. I could only watch.
A scrolling, taunting message was running across the electronic sign in the city, as the news channels were cutting in, showing images of the attack. "A BRAND NEW FUTURE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY SHINRON - GREY"
This... this had gone too far. I looked at the devastation, the wreckage coming through a hundred channels. I had taken part in this. We all had. We'd bought wholesale into this rhetoric, and it got so far away from our goals, our reality. I had brought people in to this madness because I thought there was some noble end, some message behind the revolution. But the Grey only ever had anarchy in mind.
I felt a sucking gut wound of pain in my midsection, which I attributed to the anxiety and helplessness. And now, with the world devolving into screeching metal monsters and flaming rubble topside, I felt like everything was racing towards some horrible conclusion.
I felt heartsick as I left the control center behind. But before I could exit the room, I saw an anguished, panicked yell go up from the room of engineers, and one of them pointed at a newsfeed showing grainy camera footage of a bigger, stronger machine rumbling onto the street. "He's taken control of a tank!"
The world had gone insane, upside down, ridiculously so. I could barely control my legs as I left the room, and when I entered the corridor, I vomited.
Everywhere I looked I saw the mask. The cartoonish, lit up grin that hid the face of a man who had recruited me through force to do his bidding, including to recruit his possible brother.
My mind was tearing apart at the seams like someone taking Polaroids and cruelly ripping them down the middle. I didn't have much in the way of conscious thought as I went down the corridor. Just, Kyle, was all. Thinking of him because I recruited him because he was going to be an asset for us because he.
I heaved, dropped to my knees. I couldn't stop seeing footage of people being run down in the streets by cars being driven by remote. I couldn't scour these images from my head.
When I wiped the remainder from my lips and pulled myself back up, I found myself making my way down, feeling by fingertips, blindly.
And that's when I found him.
The nominal hero of the piece. The final jigsaw to be inserted into the puzzle. I remember being so skeptical when The Grey had bid me to recruit Kyle as an ambassador, so caustic. How could this mercurial, shiftless man child ever hope to rise to the occasion and stand for something other than himself? How could he champion the rights of oppressed people, take a stand against the evils of the world? When I first met him, sitting across from me at our faux-therapy sessions, god, I saw only hollowness in his eyes, and I sat back, biting my pen, thinking Jesus, Patrick, this is the one? But I felt as he came into the fold, some spark in him. A sense that he wanted to make a change in his life. A sense that he wanted to leave behind a lasting piece of himself in this world. That was my second impression.
As was turning out right then, my first impression was the more correct one.
He sat, on his bed, pipe in hand, his eyes squinted, his leg cocked up jauntily, and he blew out a cloud of sour smoke. He didn't seem fussed at all, not a care in the world.
My hand came across like a claw, slashing the pipe out of his hand. The glasswork shattered, leaving burnt offerings and ash on the tiles. Kyle's expression darkened.
"Don't you know what's happening out there?" I snapped, seeing red. "Don't you even give a shit?"
Kyle huffed, and he looked away. The question of how much of this he'd known about beforehand was barely a blip in my mind. All I knew is that he, the one who was supposed to have been at the center of our operation, was here hiding away, shirking his responsibilities. I had never been so infuriated, so... outraged at the casual indifference and nihilism I'd seen in someone. Maybe I had misjudged Kyle Shane after all. Maybe he was the kind that folded after being hit with the hard work, after all...
"I knew it was too late when Hiro got his father to double down on security after our night in jail," Kyle said. His voice was maudlin, introspective. He had to have been thinking of it as one more relationship he'd broken beyond repair. But I had no patience for his friend drama. "You did say Shinron was in everything, their computer systems and on-board navigation for all of these smart cars were ripe for the picking. Patrick... Grey... was talking about the possibilities of doxxing them. But I didn't think he'd do it."
"So you knew," I said, furious, wanting to hit him again. "And you didn't do squat about it? Goddammit Kyle. This revolution was supposed to be about changing things. About elevating our world for the better."
"Hey, don't give me that bullshit." Kyle said, rising to his feet, and now it looked like he wanted to hit me. "You never once gave me any clear idea of what you wanted from me. I dropped out of MIT and sold drugs for a living. You wanted me to use my connections to Hiro, just 'because his father owns our company through a couple different corporations, but you never once gave me clear indication what that means. It's like you had no idea what to do with this throughline once you started."
I threw my hands up, exasperated. "Well excuse me, I thought for sure the great God of Game could figure something out. Let me tell you something, if we did put a lot of weight on you, maybe it was as a reaction to your delusion that you're the most important thing in the world. Spoiler alert: you're not."
"Oh, fuck you, Krista! For all of this you had people show up at my friends, stalk my ex, and tap my phones just so you could get me under control. Because that's what he wanted. Chaos out there, control in here." He said, jabbing a finger in the direction we guessed the Voice in the Grey was hiding.
"So, get up off your ass and do something about it."
He turned away from me, stubborn as an ox. "I can't, and it doesn't matter. I wanted to be a part of something different than the same antics I got into in WGWF, feeling adrift and just getting by selling pot in my spare time. I wanted to join a new cause, a new challenge, and do something people had never seen, something that would change the world. But people don't want to hear what I have to say." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "My legacy is always going to be that I let something slip through my fingers. Some playing god I am."
I then, took him by the chin, and raised his eyes up to meet mine, and spoke to him firmly: "I don't ever want to hear you talk about yourself like that again."
He looked at me, shocked. "I know that the depression and anxiety have gone hand in hand with the drive to compete and succeed for so long and that you ride this rollercoaster of highs and lows. I know your words are just the demons talking. But dammit, Kyle, nobody came here to see you whine. You are Kyle Shane, and you earned a right to talk about yourself in high regard. So you didn't leave a mark with this group, you still came in looking to try something different. And that's what you need, is to dust yourself off and try. The only thing stopping you, is you."
Whether it was in defiance of the motivational speech, or because a fire had been lit under him, he stood, and there again, I saw that hollowness receding from his eyes. And, well, maybe my second opinion of him wasn't so far off the mark.
"And I want you to remember, Kyle, it's up to the winners to write in the end what history says. The people that dare, the people that try when they get knocked down. They're the ones who get to say what their legacy is. Not the people who give up. So don't give up on the rebellion now."
"You're right," he said, and just like that, his smirk seemed a little more cutting, his hair springier. It was like Shane was coming alive. He checked his phone, seeing updates scrolling on his screen. And he knew it was time to go. He was out the door, and down the corridor. Away from the tech room where members of the group were still punching away on laptops while a doomsday scenario played out on a million news bulletins. He didn't stop there. He was dogged, heading straight to the source.
"Wait, where are you going?" I asked, jogging after him, long legs and all.
"It's about time we ended this whole Grey nonsense and bring it all crashing down. I'm gonna do what I should have done the first time I saw under that mask. I'm going head to head with my brother."
"And then we're gonna see what they write about today in the books."
I know you all saw what just happened.
I went into last week largely unheralded. I was determined to play the underground hero card to it's hilt, because I don't see weakness in being the Underground champion. I said that I was going to prefer to remain unambitious, stay in the background, stay my hand from stepping into a main event caliber role and dominating, because I was tired of the weekly grind that being the top guy in any fed entails. I was just coming back from fatal burnout. When I was facing Grimm I was content to take shots from afar at the throne. Whereas Grimm could only bluesky about what a feather in anyone's cap facing Grimm could be, and even politely, saying that it didn't matter whether I won or lost, I would still make a name for myself. That was the side plot in last week's history book. But when the final page turned, I lost. So my name went down in crushing defeat and I was sent tumbling down to start all over again, right? Broken, dejected, like Sisyphus, weeping and having to push the stone up the goddamn hill all over again, oh woe is me. Except that that isn't the story that was written in the history books. And that is not how I'm interpreting my career track from here on out.
See, last week's Trauma, the announcers were playing up the fact that I, not Grimm, was the only REAL champion in that match, as well they should have because I won my belt via show of force in a wrestling match, not losing my chin hairs and falling off a cage. Even facing the six time, dominating champion, the crowd was turning onto my side the entire match and, brief as it was, I had him on the ropes. I had the Hangtown Horror right where I wanted him, and it was only one small mistake that lost me a battle. But that pyrrhic victory of Grimm's won me a world. I earned more esteem and more recognition in that one night than I did beating ten Lunacy's. And now there's no hiding my light under a bushel. All I can think is that I was stupid to try to portray myself as low key and content where I was when facing Grimm. Because now that I know what I can grasp I don't want to stop. When you go on the wikipedia page for PCW, from here on out, this is where my name is going to start racking up the entries. Because as has been pointed out, when the final say has been done and history is in the books, how people look at you is all up to you.
Now, with that said, I have to turn my attention back to the female contingent, since it seems that history is trying to peg me into this stereotype.
You have Olivia Xavier, demanding a title shot from me after weeks - WEEKS! - of her "mind games" and her "war against misogyny" that she was taking to me. But once she lost her spot in line, she was quick to sweet talk and try and get back into contention. To bat her little eyelashes and try to curry favor with me again after weeks of being so cold. Then when I told her in no uncertain terms that she was a loser, and as such, lost her spot... then she goes back to the heartless virago act, the shrill harpy shrieking "YOU'RE A CREEP!" and slapping me in the face. And I didn't take kindly to being assaulted, but I held my hand. Until...
You have Hiroshi Yukio coming in, riding in like a fat Don Quixote riding on a mule of his own blubber shooting off his mouth about protecting the smaller and weaker people from "bullies" like me. Side note, isn't EVERYONE smaller than Hiroshi Yukio, therefore the big idiot's going to have quite a full schedule. But he calls me a bully... And so...
You have the final piece of this historical drama, Eira. Who also fits the criteria of Hiroshi's protectorate, because compared to me she is smaller, weaker, and severely outclassed as a fighter to the point where if I pushed myself more than even moderately hard in the ring I'd beat her so badly that she'd need to take another hiatus. As I beat Eira, quite handily, the last time we faced. What's changed between now and then? Well, shocking everyone, she did pick up a win over Whitey Ford at Mass Destruction and now there are higher stakes, since this match is for entry into The Icemann Invitational Tournament, but no, no, nothing's really changed per se. Eira is Eira. She'll show, or she won't. She'll half-ass, or she'll... quarter ass, really, I have yet to see anything out of Eira that constitutes actual, physical effort, no matter how good beating Whitey makes her look. Fact is, that effort didn't come into play when she faced me last time. So I'm wondering. How badly am I going to come off for this? If Hiroshi was willing to wallop me and swing his bags of suet at my head to knock me off guard just because I blocked Olivia from slapping me, how about this week when I have Eira dead to rights, with a trip to the quarterfinals of TI-IEbutnotbeforeC-T tournament and a chance to gain absolutely everything I looked for when I came to PCW, all of that hanging in the balance. When I step up to the plate and smack it out the park, and when I cave in Eira's bottle bleach head. What's the takeaway there? Bullying or nah?
Doesn't matter.
I'm writing my own chapter in history. History doesn't take into account whether someone was bullying, because at the end, all that matters is the resulting rise to power. And if the narrator is a little unreliable, or the main character shows some shades of grey don't take offense. But the fact is, I've been writing these "Books" every week trying to gauge what you people want to read, but it's never been what or how I like to write. It hasn't done me any favors. I think it's time that I stop caring if y'all like how the book's written and just go to town like I'm writing a textbook.
So the bad news for Eira is that she's just going to be a footnote this week. Upon which is stamped my footprint, sub-set her forehead.
Put your faith in the words of the man who's going to have several volumes about his exploits when all's said and done.
I've only just begun to show you all what I can do. If you thought the announcers were going gaga last week, just watch The Icemann Invitational Tournament. The real champion that they heralded last week is going to cut through the ice, claim the title shot, and then get another crack at the Hangtown Horror so I can show him exactly why he was labelled the false one.
My fucking word, so it is written, so it shall be.
Ha.
